British coffee-powered car breaks world record

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A bunch of crazy, tea-drinking northern Brits have set a new land speed record for a gasification-powered vehicle, fueled only by coffee beans. The car, which you can see in the image above alongside its engineer Martin Bacon and with the most awesome license plate in the world, is called — you guessed it — The Coffee Car, and it was created by the Teesdale Conservation Volunteers of Durham, England.

The previous gasification-powered speed record — held by some wussy Americans called “Beaver Energy” — was a mere 47mph, fueled by wood pellets. The Coffee Car averaged no less than 66.5mph and was granted a Guinness World Record in return.

But what is gasification? Good question. By introducing a controlled amount of oxygen (or steam) to the coffee beans (or any organic, carbon-based material), and by increasing the temperature of the fuel to temperatures above 700C (1292F), a fuel called syngas (synthetic gas) is produced. Syngas consists of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane, and can be burned using a normal internal combustion engine — or used in fuel cells.

Basically, The Coffee Car is an attempt to show that renewable, green energy can be used to power cars — and as you can see in the BBC video clip, the performance is rather impressive. You have to put up with a car that looks a bit like the Delorean from Back to the Future — a Rover SD1, in case you were wondering — but that’s hardly a bad thing. There’s also no mention of what the syngas fuel actually smells like; does it reek of methane, or is there a slight hint of Javan roast?

With its British provenance and all, though, it’s a shame that tea (milk, no sugar) isn’t as combustible as coffee beans…

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Max Parker

The one thing which sticks out to me is that his numberplate starts with AOL!

ES Dempsey

I loved this — and don’t skip the video. British ingenuity. It reminded me of Orville and Wilbur making airplanes from bicycle parts. Sadly, we don’t do this kind of stuff anymore in the U.S. The other thing it reminded me of is that British reality game show in the ’90s — Robot Wars or something. I used to love to watch that.
I think the huge problem is the tremendously high heat in a small footprint. It’s similar to the issues of the early natural gas powered vehicles — they are basically a terrorist’s wet dream, an explosive on wheels. Mind your hands, dear. Make sure you put on your asbestos gloves before you go out for a spin. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch the video.) Pictures speak a thousand words and that dragon fire plume spewing from the fender definitely gave one pause. But all that said, I think this is something worth developing. The issue is how to generate a thousand-plus degrees of heat in a very small space in a safe and green way. The last time we went about this we came up with the atomic bomb. Hmmm. They make mini-reactors for the inter-planetary satellites — perhaps you could adapt one of those?

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Ah, Robot Wars…

I think that actually started in the US, for what it’s worth — I actually know one of the guys who won it in the US… or was runner up… or something like that!

Thanks for stopping by :)

swag

I wish this lame idea would just go away. They’ve been at it for a couple years now.

Anonymous

Does it reek of methane? Isn’t methane is colorless and odorless?

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Good point! I was thinking of bovine methane… which obviously has some other molecules in it :)

Great. Just what we need. An additional source of demand to make coffee even more expensive than it already is.

brian hughes

No, they use waste coffee grounds.

http://profiles.google.com/mrlizard Lizard Lizard

How much energy does it take to produce the syngas, including the energy costs of harvesting, shipping, and preparing the beans?

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

It can run on any kind of carbon-based fuel, afaik — such as wood pellets.

brian hughes

Irrelevant, they’re using the waste coffee grounds.

Lupius

How can this be considered green technology if syngas contains both CO and CO2?

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

I assume because it produces less than petroleum/diesel — or maybe it’s consumed during the combustion! Not sure.

Could be that it’s just renewable, rather than green :) (But that’s mostly the same thing.)

brian hughes

They’re using biomass material- effectively releasing CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere last year, rather than burning fossil fuels, and diverting waste from landfill.

ben-goldberg

Carbon monoxide going into an engine is a fuel; carbon monoxide going out of the exhaust is a pollutant. Engines which run on syngas from a gasifier produce very very little CO in their exhaust.

Engines run on syngas do produce some CO2 in their exhaust, and of course this is a greenhouse gas, however…

The feedstock which goes into the gasifier (in this case, used coffee grounds) would (if it hadn’t been used for this purpose) otherwise have gone to a landfill and rotted and eventually released that same amount of CO2, the technology is carbon neutral, since it doesn’t put any greater amount of CO2 into the air than would have gone if the gasifier hadn’t been involved.

A liberal might even call it carbon negative, since biomass (the used coffee grounds) rotting in a landfill will produce methane, in addition to CO2, and methane is a vastly more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 is. Thus, by gasifying the coffee grounds instead of letting them rot, less harm to the atmosphere is done.

http://profile.yahoo.com/2NEFXJ4HI4YPMQT76LFCIIMUSE martin

At last someone with some brains,,, why to people talk about things they no nothing about you have got it 100%,,, i built this car
Martin Bacon

http://profile.yahoo.com/2NEFXJ4HI4YPMQT76LFCIIMUSE martin

At last someone with some brains,,, why to people talk about things they no nothing about you have got it 100%,,, i built this car
Martin Bacon

http://twitter.com/evert_ Evert Albers

This probably works best with Italian cars.

David Griffin

“Does it reek of methane ?”

Pray tell, how exactly does methane reek ?
I thought it was odourless (except in the USA where it is odorless)

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KONZYPZBF5RU73V3Z6UUDFAMTY Peter H

And, um, what energy source do you use to heat the coffee beans up to 700C to get the thing going? And how do you keep them at 700C?

brian hughes

They used charcoal and wood kindling to light the gasifier- once it’s lit, the heat from the partial combustion keeps it going.

Biomass power uses local stocks of short cycle carbon that was absorbed from the atmosphere by a growing plant. That carbon would otherwise be released when the biomass rots, so no net new carbon into earths atmosphere.

Fossil fuels spew tons of carbon that would otherwise never become part of the earth’s carbon cycle.

Stanley Meyer must be rolling in his grave! He made a car that ran on water. I watched a documentary on how they tested postal vehicles in Stockton CA that ran on just water. Where has this technology gone?

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